Twitter archive a time machine into your social media past

Ever wanted to see what the first thing you said on Twitter was? Twitter's new archiving feature let's you do just that, and track the root cause of your social media addiction.

The microblogging service announced the archiving feature late last year, and it's been steadily rolling across Twitter's user base since then.

Users download an archive file which is used to search your Twitter history, permalink to your old tweets, and show a graph of your usage since signing up to the social network.

This is a great way to keep a copy of all the things you've said in the past, whether for the sake of nostalgia or to use in a court case of some sort.

Below is my first ever tweet on October 12, 2008.

Not all my historical tweets were as innocent and adorable as the above. A quick look through my tweets shows blatant evidence of my youthful stupidity in all its glory, things I regret ever saying online which make me look like a right old twit.

This leads to the possibility thatTwitter's archiving tool can be by employers to screen potential employees? Or by governments looking to weed out critical dissent? If not directly by asking for the archives, then through a separate paid service run by Twitter in the future .

What ever the case, it always does well to remember not to put anything online (no matter how secure or private you might believe the service to be) unless you're willing for your future employers, the government, or worse, grandma to see it.